Now, from what you've said it sounds as if the answer to this question must be Yes, but just to be sure: Direct rendering was enabled and working OK with the GeForce Go, right? (The only reason I'd want a laptop with an ATI or nVidia card is that they have decent OpenGL and direct rendering support.)

So no, it doesn't look like Direct rendering is switched on. Which makes the graphics performance even more impressive... you can rotate windows in real-time, and it's very responsive !
Unfortunately, there's no tuxracer or anything else I know to be 3D on the cd (also no vi or even emacs !)

Not sure what else I can do, testing-wise... do you know of another live CD that includes the proprietary nVidia drivers ?

No direct rendering? Shame, and odd too. I don't think it matters that the DRI section is commented out, because the nvidia driver uses its own proprietary alternative to DRI. So long as the glx module is being loaded (as you say), hardware-accelerated OpenGL should be good to go.

I'll have a look round for some other LiveCDs that contain nVIDIA's proprietary drivers. nelz mentioned PCLinuxOS, but I don't know anything about that.

OK, I'll take the laptop home over the weekend in case you find anything.
Looking Glass is a bit of an oddity at the moment, but I hope it's the way of the future - I'd love to see that panoramic desktop in a mainstream distro.

I think it's just important to not load the dri module when using the nvidia module, because nVIDIA cards don't do DRI. And if the dri module isn't loaded, the DRI section is (probably) ignored anyway.

Nigel wrote:OK, I'll try & get Mepis overnight (don't want to tie up the bandwidth at work) - will report back over the weekend.

Grrr

Took three goes to get the SimplyMepis LiveCD to download completely. Booted it up tonight, only to find that it uses the nv drivers - you can switch to nVidia, but only if you're running from hard disk & are connected to the internet.

So I'm afraid we've drawn a blank here.

On the plus side, SimplyMepis did detect all the hardware, including the wireless network card, and it looks like it would be easy to install.

The only other vaguely interesting LiveCD I can find that claims to use NVIDIA drivers is Elive, which demonstrates the Enlightenment 17 desktop environment. Download and try at your own risk of disappointment!

Yes, the Elive CD (with Enlightenment 17) does use the nVidia drivers !

I'm getting a frame rate of between 2200 & 2780 FPS with glxgears.
And glxinfo reports that direct rendering is ON.

So, the definitive answer to your question... Yes, the GeForce Go chipset is supported, it does work with the proprietary driver, it does use direct rendering and it is reasonably fast (compare the FPS figures for my desktop!).

I must say I rather like the Elive distro... the Enlightenment desktop looks rather good - clean & uncluttered, the way I like 'em.

Nobber - thanks for giving me the excuse to play around with this. I wouldn't have gone anywhere near either Elive or Looking Glass otherwise, now I'm going to have a good play with the former & keep an eye on the latter for when it's ready for daily use.

^Aye, I've got a 3-year-old HP laptop with S3 Savage "Twister" graphics. I can get direct rendering working, and it's good enough for smooth play with tuxkart, but Quake II (a game released in 1997, remember) in OpenGL mode is faaar tooo slooow.